In this five-minute video, I will show you the backend of my website and help you to understand the data you see in the WordPress.com Stats section, including traffic and insights.
Aargh! I broke my website and now I have to fix it!
If you’ve followed me for a long time, you know that I used to blog as Magnolia2Mumbai. Well, it seems that when I moved to my jeanspraker.com domain, that I did not quite follow website domain transfer best practices, and I broke my website.
As part of their event, Pen America encouraged those who could not be in New York today to submit our own readings.
This reading from Haroun and the Sea of Stories is from chapter 10, Haroun’s Wish. The speaker who opens the excerpt is Khattam-Shud, whose name means “completely finished or over and done with” according to the book’s glossary.
At first glance, a book on Indian historiography might not seem easily accessible to a general audience.
Yet, Thapar’s prose is lucid, and her tone remains conversational without losing its scholarly authority. Thapar connects arguments about the past to our present quite beautifully.
This One Book book choice and its companions like the others before it reflect the diversity of this city. But it also shows how limited the resources truly are.
There’s a story about my maternal grandmother, Mom-Mom, and it goes something like this. My grandmother was always an avid reader. Despite dropping out of
In her book Work Pray Code, sociologist Carolyn Chen explores how tech firms in Silicon Valley have transformed the relationship between work and religion.
The first thing you notice about The Hadley restaurant is its vintage vibe. From the wood paneling that floats up the wall to meet tiered chandeliers to the heavy, cristal d’arques drink tumblers, every detail communicates mid-century design.
Tell me if you’ve seen this movie before…. There are these 3 college friends. When the movie opens, your first thought is, “Arre, yaar, these guys are idiots.” Then you see the girl. Because there is always a girl, isn’t there? Naturally, things don’t go well, the lovers are thwarted, and the friends end up standing at a train station that’s supposed to be in UP, but strongly resembles a Mumbai local station. All before the opening credits. That’s when you realize that you’ve guessed the wrong movie name. This movie is Netflix India’s latest release Upstarts.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my two years in Philly, it’s the Power of Penn. Inclusion. Innovation. Impact. These three words underline Penn’s commitment to the community through collaboration and creativity. For 25 years, The Netter Center for Community Partnerships has lived this mission by “building a movement for democracy and social change.” That movement includes the Center’s Nonprofit Institute under the direction of Associate Director Isabel Sampson-Mapp.
“We didn’t wait for stuff to happen to us. But that story is rarely told. And so, for me, that’s an amazing story of men and women and children who seized their moment out of nothing.” — Christy Coleman, CEO American Civil War Museum
Being bullied in school When I was in 8th grade, I was bullied by my friends. Strike that. Classmates *I thought* were my friends bullied
One Book, One Philadelphia is my favorite Free Library of Philadelphia program. I love that the program builds community through reading. For two months every
I was born in Philly. For the first five years of my life, I lived just off Rising Sun Avenue. That changed when my parents
I hate Amazon’s review system. I consider it a trash fire sitting on top of another garbage fire lit by trolls and paid reviews. The
I love the Skyline Room at the Free Library of Philadelphia. The gold elevators you must take to get there and the spectacular view of
In our post-literate world, who will have the last word?
I had just signed the lease on my apartment. I was an adult now. Naturally, I did what every reasonable adult would do. I climbed
Last night, the University of Pennsylvania did something it hasn’t done in 50 years, something radical. A teach-in.
I was in a literary fiction hellscape populated with unfocused ideas and disconnected connections. Saying too much and nothing at all. How the hell did I get here? Overcogitation, of course, dear reader. And appropriation. Wait. What? I hear you, dear reader. You thought this post was going to meander down the well-worn navel-gazing tunnels of writerly insecurity and doubt. Oh no. I’m sorry, dear reader. You’ve come to the wrong blog for that. This post is about culture and its appropriation.
The essence of Brené Brown’s new book Braving the Wilderness lies in these words from an 8th grader: “If I get to be me, I
Reading Indian writing in English represents an act of translation every time I read. Yes, even when the book is written in English, every book
The journey from Sikkim in the far north to Karnataka in the south isn’t just long; it’s arduous, entailing multiple long-haul trains. Such a journey would be difficult for a girl so young. I knew that. What I didn’t know is how to ask what I could not ask without asking.
Update: Since I published this blog in 2017, I have had the opportunity to read Ms. Bajpai’s book. The stories bear no resemblance to each
There she was, at the back of the shop, leaning against VS Naipaul. She’d travelled so far from her native place to reach mine. That
I went to Bangalore with one goal: FINISH THE DAMN BOOK! And, finish I did. The book is currently with a few kind readers. I
For all the focus in the Gita on action rather than outcome, a book review, let alone a verdict, seems almost superfluous. As a novice reader of the Gita, I would recommend this book. I am glad this was my last read of 2016.
Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar has written a powerful, provocative short story collection that explores Adivasi identity politics and experience. Brilliant, layered storytelling at its finest.
It’s in his philosophical approach that Subramanian shines. For while on the surface the book is a story of a guy trying to prove an astrologer wrong, at its core, Rain is a complex study of the struggle we all face when we try to understand belief within the framework of a highly scientific culture.
Of traffic and trafficking The cars on MG Road were traffucked, as usual. In the time it was taking for us to make the